The conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s interpretive style—dynamic, muscular, decisive, and, well, loud—finds its best outlet in extroverted, highly dramatic pieces. Undertaking the Metropolitan Opera’s annual...

The Renaissance composer William Byrd was a devout Catholic whose abstention from Protestant services landed him on recusancy lists and subjected him to fines in Elizabethan England. One of his...